800.00B Communist International/247: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:40 p.m.]
524. The announcement of the intention to dissolve the Communist International constitutes in my opinion a step of first rate importance. While it is generally believed here that the Comintern has not been active on any large scale since the beginning of the war it will be recalled that as recently as February 22, 1943, it was made clear that it was still functioning as an organization. (See Kuibyshev’s 196, February 23, 6 [3] p.m.1)
There has been no editorial comment on the announcement and in the absence of any lead our Soviet contacts are reluctant to discuss the matter. The general reaction, however, appears to be that it is a gesture toward cooperation and a mark of confidence by the Soviet Government in its Allies. The disclosure of the decision of the Communist Party of the US to leave the Comintern in November 1940 came as a surprise as this does not appear to have been generally known here.
With respect to the effect of this action abroad it may be well [well be] that it will serve to stimulate the growth of the Communist parties in Britain and the US by removing the stigma of foreign control. On the other hand Communists in these countries long trained to look to Moscow for guidance will no doubt tend to continue to follow Soviet policy as publicly expressed.
Some observers here have pointed out that this action is likely also to be welcomed by Japan and that it should have the effect of facilitating the maintenance of good relations with that country. If accepted [Page 535] at its face value it would destroy the ideological basis of the Anti-Comintern Pact.2
The Soviet Union now enjoys an unprecedented popularity in Britain and the US and I have little doubt also in the countries of devastated Europe. This admiration has been well earned by the heroic resistance of the Soviet people and the Red army and this in turn will be associated in the minds of many people with the Soviet system. This admiration which is felt by all classes of people would not always benefit by Soviet representation by a particular national Communist group. Moreover, it may be expected that following the war there will be upheavals and intense and bitter political strife in many countries throughout the world in which the Communist parties of those countries will be involved—in many cases unsuccessfully and possibly in a manner not to the best interests of the USSR. To my mind the Soviet Union stands to gain from publicly disassociating itself from responsibility for them and thus increasing its freedom of action.
I believe that [for] some time the Comintern has been basically an agency of Soviet national policy rather than of world international revolution and that this policy will be furthered rather than hindered by this action. To say this, however, is not to belittle the importance of this development in Soviet-American relations, which I believe we should welcome. I feel this the more strongly as on the occasion of my trip to the U.S. last winter I told Litvinov that I thought that the Comintern was one of the greatest problems in the relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S.
- Not printed.↩
- Originally signed at Berlin between Germany and Japan on November 25, 1936. For text, see Reichsgesetzblatt, Teil ii, January 15, 1937, p. 28; or, the unofficial translation from the Japanese text, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 153. A secret additional agreement is published in Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, series D, vol. i, p. 734, footnote 2a. The ceremonies which attended the signing of the Protocol renewing the pact among Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Manchukuo, and Spain, took place in Berlin on November 25, 1941, at which time several other nations acceded to it. See telegram No. 4175, November 25, 1941, from the Chargé in Germany, Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. iv, p. 1025. The text of this Protocol is in Reichsgesetzblatt, 1942, Teil ii, pp. 126–127.↩